Top 3 Reasons Markets were Mixed as Groupon Announced IPO

On the commodities front, Oil (NYSE:USO) is up 41 cents a share to $100.70 a barrel, but metals continue their downward trend with Gold (NYSE:GLD) down $7.60 a share and Silver (NYSE:SLV) down 46 cents a share.

1) Continuing investigations into banks. It seems that every day we receive more news about state and national government investigations into the big banks’ mortgage practices. Today Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) was (finally) officially handed a subpoena by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, “seeking information on the firm’s activities leading into the credit crisis,” with Goldman accused of misleading clients and some of its executives possibly facing perjury charges over testimonies made before Congress last year. The news pushed Goldman shares down 1.31%. But at the same time, Goldman’s misfortune doesn’t seem to be hurting its competitors. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is up 0.44%, PNC is up 0.37%, and Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) is up 0.36%, making for a rather middling day of trading.

3) Tech had yet another big day. While Nokia (NYSE:NOK) might not be faring well in today’s market, down another 1.79% for a staggering grand total drop of 20.04% since last week, they’re more the exception than the rule. After Google’s advances toward Groupon were rebuked last year, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is preparing to take on Groupon, who announced their much-anticipated IPO today. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) also rolled out a daily deal aggregator AmazonLocal — possibly a HUGE threat to Groupon and other standalone sights. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares are up ahead of next week’s big conference, and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) is still humming after a positive session at the D9 conference.